Why we need a new education model

4 min readApr 26, 2017

Part three: Make sure the student gets the job

In part one of this article we argued that hybrid models are the way to address the mismatch between corporate expectations and graduates’ readiness for work. In this final part, we look at the answer to the deliberately provocative question posed in part two — ‘do we still need universities at all?’

The answer is to challenge the disconnect between the university experience and the job offer at the end of the process. Ryan Craig quotes Mike Fishbein, a marketing guru who has discussed what such ‘full-stack’ education companies might look like. ‘Fishbein’s view is that the goal for the end-user is not a quality educational experience, but rather a job: “Jobs are the top of the education stack.” According to Fishbein, “a full-stack education company might not look like a school at all. It could look like an employer, a lender, a school, and/or a recruiter all rolled into one” — because the point is to provide all services required to get the student a (better) job.’

In other words, for Craig, ‘if you’re going to go to the trouble of creating a product to improve higher education, and if you’re going to devote your life to a company to advance that product, you might as well make sure the student gets a job at the end of the day.’ Otherwise, the experience of university is all the student is finally being rewarded with — and in an age of increasing fees and commoditisation, that’s where many universities are, it could be argued, heading in the wrong direction, exposing themselves to attack from vocational courses and MOOCs as a result.

For Craig, writing in a separate article in Forbes, the key is to link performance to the job offer. ‘Expect to see some colleges offer a performance-based value proposition: pay tuition only once you achieve the desired outcome. For most students, that means a job — either a new job or a promotion, but definitely higher remuneration than the status quo.’ This kind of performance-based college will be, for Craig, ‘a full-stack higher education enterprise in that it will take a strong interest in what you study, and in making sure you get the job.’

On the money

There’s one more key benefit that hybrid models bring. As fees rise, higher education ‘is increasingly being commodified, and its access restricted’ writes Ethan Miller in the Huffington Post. Many students begin to feel priced out of the market, and higher fees can in some cases prevent highly able and gifted students from participating in the higher education that they deserve. Miller quotes stark figures — ‘in the last ten years, tuition and fees increased 66 percent beyond inflation at public four-year institutions and 26 percent beyond inflation at private not-for-profit institutions’ (figures based on US institutions). ‘Nationwide, total student debt has surpassed one trillion dollars and the average student with debt owes about $26,600.’

Hybrid models can disrupt these ballooning figures, as they can be more economically viable by running on a lower cost base than traditional, exclusively campus models. The model at College for America envisages education as an ‘on-ramp’ — ‘to more stable work, an on-ramp to further study.’ Identifying that one of the key barriers for their target audience is cost, LeBlanc aims to make it ‘ultra-affordable, which is why our program is out in the market at $2,500 a year.’ College for America focuses on working adults, who according to LeBlanc are ‘the majority of today’s college students’ but who are ‘often least well-served by the traditional higher ed industry.’

Students have changing expectations from their learning providers — and businesses want changes too. Traditional universities need to wake up to this change — and there are key opportunities for hybrid models to steal a march in the new competitive age by giving learners, and organisations, offerings that are more attuned to their needs.

Hybrid models — the key benefits

· Better match graduates with employers

· Competency-based approach

· Customisation

· Enhanced experience

· Ensure there is a job at the end of the process

· Economically viable

SOURCES

http://evolllution.com/opinions/audio-revolutionizing-competency-based-education/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/vocational-education-smarter-than-you-think-nicholas-wyman

http://chronicle.com/article/MIT-Dean-Takes-Leave-to-Start/235121

http://www.educationdive.com/news/will-the-internet-remove-traditional-higher-eds-prestige-factor/413466/